The traffic in Kabul has grown out of all proportion. You used to be able to cross the centre in a few minutes. Now it can even take an hour. There are thousands of cars, too many for the streets, which are too narrow. Some routes have been closed because there are military buildings on them. Then there’s the lack of discipline. The police gesticulate frantically and blow their whistles, but hardly anyone takes any notice. Now they’re resigned, and they turn a blind eye to all kinds of offences.
The most daring are the cyclists, who are convinced the rules of the road are not meant for them. They go down streets the wrong way and cross anywhere. Driving along I observe their acrobatics. I often see Omar. I hold my breath. He zigzags quickly and surely between dilapidated taxis and luxury cars.
With no hands.
He lost them in a street accident some years ago. One arm is missing from the armpit, the other from below the elbow. We gave him a hook prosthesis that he opens and closes by moving his shoulders. That’s what he holds the handlebars with.
Today, on the carrier, hanging onto a patched bag, is his small son, looking calmly around him. They must have been to the wholesale market. Many amputees won’t wear a hook – it’s too ugly, even though it has a hundred and one different uses, and you can even write with it. They prefer a plastic hand: you can’t move it but it looks less sinister. Choices.
For Omar, who couldn’t even blow his nose or pull on his trousers, the hook has given him back some autonomy. And confidence. For someone who has lived for a long time on help and charity (without arms, what can you do?), it has meant he can work again. He’s an expert herbalist, and a small loan from us helped him start up again.
Now his two-roomed house is filled with the smell of decoctions, herbs and dried flowers, and there are mortars and pestles and sieves everywhere. He supplies a number of pharmacies – there’s a demand for natural remedies. My cook will take nothing else.
Once he persuaded me. A mixture of seeds, roots and pods of heaven knows what. It was a sore throat – I thought I was going to die. Amid his reproaches, “If you don’t have faith in them, they won’t work!”. My fault.
Omar has received three loans so far. He makes his repayments punctually. The last was for retailing antibiotics, which sell like hot cakes here. He delivers them himself to the little pharmacies, on his bike. His eldest son is 15. “Why doesn’t he deliver them?” we asked. “They drive like lunatics, haven’t you seen them? It’s too risky. And anyway, he has to go to school.”
My car comes up close to him now. He stops dead: a moment’s surprise, then a big smile, while the child holds out his hand to me. And I realise that for him cycling entails yet another difficulty. He can’t use the brakes. He does everything with his feet. We need to design a brake worked by pedals, now that we have funded him to do dangerous work.
Alberto Cairo
